Li Xing and Hou

Taiwanese Popular Cinema and the Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien
Author(s): James Udden

Source: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 15, No. 1, Special Issue on Taiwan Film
(SPRING, 2003), pp. 120-145
Published by: Foreign Language Publications
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41490896
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Taiwanese Popular Cinema and
the Strange Apprenticeship of
Hou Hsiao-hsien
James Udden
The Taiwan director Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of the most discussed filmmak-
ers in Asian cinema today. The main reason for the lavish attention is mani-
fest: Hou's aesthetic has made an indelible mark on world cinema. More
difficult however, is explaining the origins of this unique aesthetic. Many

have tried to fit Hou into existing categories and paradigms of art film
while ignoring the peculiarities of Hou's early years in the film industry;
what gets lost in the picture are the conditions under which Hou learned
the medium and# in particular, the many years he spent in the Taiwanese
popu/ar film industry. Ignoring Hou's early career in popular cinema, many
commentators have sought more ready-made explanations for the origins
of his aesthetic. Often they find recourse in generalized, cultural explana-
tions (Cheshire 1993: 56-62; Frodon 2000: 22-25; Meng 2000: 48-49; Ni
1994: 75; Pimpaneau 2000: 65-68). When these critics place their emphasis
on elements of "Chineseness" in Hou's work, they run the risk of misrepre-
senting his unique career. They overlook the fact that the bulk of Hou's
work has been specifically about histories and cultures of Taiwan, and not
China per se. Writers and critics in Taiwan, on the other hand, have ac-
knowledged Hou's affinity to Taiwan's histories and cultures, but they have
1 Ye (2001) offers a useful summary of failed to assess his work outside of ideological concerns.1
both the foreign and domestic
reactions to Hou's works.
Another common critical trope in film studies is to speak of "influ-
ences." Film critics often compare younger directors to other filmmakers
120 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien
of an older generation and argue that the style of a latecomer "resembles,"
"echoes/' or "recalls" that of a certain giant of world cinema. The under-
lying implication is that there is an unimpeded transmission of stylistic and
thematic goods from older to younger directors. The scholarship on Hou,
especially early on, identified resemblances and affinities between Hou
and numerous other renowned directors, most of all Ozu (Cheshire 1993:
58; Hoberman 1987: 62; Stanbrook 1990: 121-122). Given his tendency to
use the long take, others (Liu 1 985: 90) have tried to cast Hou as a follower
of Bazin, a French film theorist who favored the long take. Such influence
approaches are not without merit, as long as careful attention is also paid
to differences. Even so, there is scant evidence to suggest that Hou was
influenced by the likes of Ozu and Bazin. Hou claims he never saw an Ozu
film until after he had made A Time to Live , A Time to Die (Tongnian
wangshi, 1985), by which time the often spurious comparisons between
him and the Japanese master were already in vogue (Zhu/Wu 1992: 43-
44). In a 1989 interview, Hou was asked about what influence Bazin had
had on him, to which he responded: "Who's Bazin?" (Cai 1990: 27). Later,
Hou would meet recognized masters such as Theo Angelopoulos and Abbas
Kiarostami and claim to have had no idea who they were (Jiao 2002). Aside
from Godard's Breathless and Pasolini's Oedipus Rex (Hou 2000: 98) - both
of which were more catalysts to help him break from existing practices in
Taiwan than models to be followed - Hou has cited a limited number of
influences. In short, arguing that "influences" are the origins of Hou Hsiao-
hsien's film aesthetic is a critical cul-de-sac. Moreover, Hou's films stand
well on their own and do not need to be somehow "justified" with refer-
ence to influences or international standards.
Few critics have acknowledged that Hou primarily began not as a film
student, but as a film apprentice. Unlike Edward Yang and other members
of the Taiwan New Cinema, Hou never went to film school abroad, and his
formative years as a filmmaker were spent entirely in Taiwan. Further-
more, the film school he attended in Taiwan was little more than a theater
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 121
program, one with both an acute paucity of film equipment and a curricu-
lum so lacking that the most memorable film Hou saw there was a lesser
Kazan film, The Arrangement (1969) (Hou 2001). Nearly every critic has
overlooked the importance of the specific conditions in which Hou learned
his craft. Tony Rayns (1988: 163) is one of the few to note what an odd
story this is: "Hou Xiaoxian's progress through the Taiwan film industry is
a rare - possibly unique - instance in world cinema of a film-maker com-
pletely transcending the tenets and habits of the milieu in which he was
formed and trained." Indeed, the trajectory of Hou's career is nothing
short of remarkable. When he entered the film industry, Hou was bound
by one of the most constrictive ideological and industrial environments
found anywhere. By the 1990s, by contrast, Hou faced almost limitless
choices because his primary venue was now foreign film festivals, and his
audiences art cinema aficionados.
The critical issue here is that these local, and initially constrictive, in-
dustrial conditions had a greater impact on the development of Hou's style
than has often been assumed. Moreover, Hou's true film education came
after film school, during his workaday experience in the popular film in-
dustry in Taiwan throughout much of the 1 970s. As strange as it may seem,
in this remarkably insular world, Hou learned lessons that would have a
profound and lasting influence on his later aesthetic, even on his most
recent films. As Rayns makes clear, Hou did in the end "transcend" the
commercial film industry of the 1970s, but it was a convoluted and tortu-
ous journey. Most crucial in this journey is the degree to which he learned
and internalized the tenets and habits of the popular film industry, in the
process becoming acutely sensitive to their egregious shortcomings. Ulti-
mately, Hou learned from that industry both a way to make films and a
way not to make films. The popular industry became a negative example
that would form a bedrock upon which everything else would eventually
follow. This is what I like to call the "strange apprenticeship" of Hou Hsiao-
hsien.
Given the preceding claim, I must, of course, describe in some detail
the conditions in this industry, especially in the 1970s when Hou slowly
rose through its ranks. As we shall see, two overriding and symbiotically
linked forces - the government of Taiwan and the cinema of Hong Kong -
had a direct impact on how films were made in Taiwan. After showing the
repercussions of these two forces on Taiwan films, I discuss what lessons
Hou learned and how the first steps he took toward developing his own
aesthetic were spurred not from his culture, nor from abstract theoretical
formulations, nor even from his exposure to other classics of world cinema
in film classes, but from the constrictive, and often frustrating and even
bizarre, world of the Taiwanese commercial film industry.
Conditions in the Taiwanese Film Industry

From 1949 to the 1980s, the fortunes of the commercial film industry in
Taiwan were inextricably knotted with the two symbiotically linked fac-
tors of the Taiwanese government and the Hong Kong film industry. The
government in Taiwan, unlike that in Hong Kong, tried to nourish the
industry with one hand and strangle it with the other. Certainly the gov-
ernment influenced the industry both through officious censorship and by
promoting feature-length propaganda films, films that were not always
in the industry's best commercial interest. 2 Yet the primary effect the gov- 2 See Huang 2001: 27. Huang notes,
for example, that a 1959 propaganda
ernment had on the industry was economic, and it was the economic po- film. General of the Flying Tigers
lices that left an indelible mark on the films themselves. (Feihu jiangjun), spared no expense in
depicting the training of Air Force
The Taiwanese government did not nurture the film industry in the pilots at the local Air Force Academy.
way it did most other industries on the island - a nurturing that led, in Yet given the military's requirement
that no planes could be shown having
part, to the vaunted "economic miracle" of the 1980s. The KMT (National- any problems or accidents, and no
ists) had long distrusted film as a medium and felt it could not let the film lives could be lost in the film's plot
(out of fear of dissuading people
industry run free as it had been allowed to in Shanghai in the 1930s, when from joining the Air Force Academy),
leftist cinema, commonly regarded as the first golden age of Chinese cin- the finished film became so lacking in
any climax or dramatic tension that it
ema, ascended to the popular screen. Motivated by fear of a resurgence lost its propaganda and commercial
of leftist cinema, the KMT declared cinema a "special" industry, which it punch as well.
regulated strictly. The industry suffered as a result: taxes on tickets were
the highest in the world, and stamp taxes were eleven times that for any
other industry on the island. However, it was the government's policy of
levying import duties that had the most profound impact: any film-re-
lated equipment that was imported was considered a "luxury item" and
thus subject to customs duties often fifty percent higher than that charged
for equipment in any other industry (Huang 2001: 35-36). Film stock was
also taxed, making this crucial commodity so precious in Taiwan that people
speculated in it or used it sparingly (Lu 1998: 80).
The Hong Kong commercial film industry, already well ahead of Tai-
wan in its development, was exempt from these rules in Taiwan (Lu 1998:
48-52). Hong Kong producers making films in Taiwan could get back all of
their customs duties if they returned to Hong Kong with their equipment
within a six-month period, more than enough time to shoot a film on
location (Huang 2001: 37-38; Lu 1998: 77, 196-198). It may seem odd that
Taiwan's government would implement policies that favored the British
colony's industry over its own, but it is important to realize that for a long
time, the two industries were not seen as completely separate. The Hong
Kong industry even played a major role in bolstering the private industry
in Taiwan ever since Li Hanxiang, a major director of costume dramas at
the Shaw Bros, studio and one of the biggest box office draws in the in-
dustry, came over from Hong Kong in 1963 (Jiao 1993: 18-19; Huang 2001:
32; Liang 1998: 19). By the 1970s, the Hong Kong and Taiwan film indus-
tries were not so much competitors as they were rich and poor cousins.
The two industries shared certain production practices, some genres, fund-
ing sources, and even personnel. However, Hong Kong tended to handle
higher-budgeted films, whereas Taiwan handled the lower end. The Tai-
wan film industry did make some big-budget films on occasion, and its
role in some of King Hu's best works is undeniable, but it was never a
match for Hong Kong in terms of production values, budgets, and market-
ing. Hong Kong could be compared to the big Hollywood studios MGM
and Paramount; Taiwan, with the exception of the party-run Central Mo-
tion Picture Corporation (Zhongyang dianying gongsi), was more like AIP
(American International Pictures). Worse yet, like so many places in the
world, in Taiwan, distributors - not producers - controlled the game, and
if favoring Hong Kong over their local product suited their economic in-
terests, they gave no thought to abandoning locally made films in favor of
more profitable fare.
Miraculously, despite government interference, heavy customs duties,
and a productive neighbor who could easily fill the demand for films in
Taiwan's theaters, films still got produced in Taiwan, and in some years in
great numbers. Yet more often than not, local commentators denigrated
these films. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, even the head of the Gov-
ernment Information Office, James Soong, expressed shame over the quality
of Taiwan films. Soong berated the entire industry in a now famous open
letter (Soong 1981: 2-3). Why did so many paint the Taiwan film industry
in such negative terms when it was still producing large numbers of films?
Commercial film industries are often accused of being formulaic and es-
capist (although such charges are often not entirely justified), but as the
1970s progressed, practices in the Taiwanese film industry became par-
ticularly codified and ossified: coupled with ideological restraints created
by one of the tensest decades in Taiwan history, the range of choices for
film artists of all stripes became more and more narrow. Some of the re-
sulting practices were modeled on the Hong Kong industry, but there were
some particular economic and political conditions in Taiwan that in the
long run weakened the industry vis-à-vis Hong Kong's. Ultimately, it came
down to money: Hong Kong film production was better financed and thus
had more film stock.
That the two industries tended to specialize in different genres fur-

ther reveals the disparity between them. Taiwan in the 1970s did produce
some cheap knockoffs of Hong Kong's generic mainstays, such as sword-
play and kung-fu, but its production was dominated by a broad category
of films called wenyi pian. In the catalogs of the film archives in Taipei, the
term wenyi pian is translated as "romance films," but it is a seemingly
omnivorous category in which serious historical films such as Hou's City of
Sadness are also lumped. Thus, wenyi pian seems to stand for dramatic
films, although the term (wenyi means "literary arts") also implies adapta-
tion from literary works. For our purposes, however, the most important
trait of these films is that they were primarily non-action works, which
made them much cheaper to make than most kung-fu and swordplay films.
Given their lower costs, Taiwan, not Hong Kong, tended to specialize in
them.
There were many possible subcategories of wenyi films. One type of

wenyi film, however, best epitomizes this category, not to mention the
Taiwanese industry of the 1 970s as a whole: the Qiong Yao films. Explain-
ing this peculiar genre as it relates to Hou Hsiao-hsien's early filmmaking
experience is crucial: Hou had almost no experience with government-
sponsored genres such as "healthy realism" {¡iankang xieshi ) or propa-
ganda films, though he did work off and on for the party-run CMPC stu-
dio. He did, however, have direct experience with these formulaic, genre
pictures called "Qiong Yao films" (Qiong Yao pian), and even began his
career on the set of one in 1973.
The Qiong Yao films reveal signs not only of the general social and
political climate of the 1970s in Taiwan, but also of how filmmakers re-
sponded to the restrictive financial conditions of the time. Based on Qiong
Yao's romance novels, these films are often stories of star-crossed lovers
from incompatible social backgrounds, with the parents of one of the lov-
3 See Lu 1998: 134. Lu, in fact, quotes
Brigitte Lin, who said frankly that
ers inevitably disapproving of the liaison. The families often live in spa-
these films were powerful precisely cious homes in the upper-class Yangming shan area, a Taiwanese equiva-
because they served as necessary
illusions in a time when things were
lent to Beverly Hills far removed from how most Taiwanese actually lived.
not so great. As such, Qiong Yao films Such extreme escapism comes as little surprise. In the 1970s, the KMT-led
reflected not the realities of Taiwan,
but an alternate universe to which government was reeling on the international stage, leaving the whole
everybody aspired to escape. island on edge.3 Yet this call to, or desperate need for, escapism was also
coupled with increasing financial limitations. Thus, to ensure minimal ex-
penditures, most scenes were shot in what the Taiwanese themselves joked
of as the "three tings" - keting , fanting, kafeiting (living room, dining
room, and coffee shop). To compensate for these low budgets, just about
any visual gimmick (which I discuss later) available was used, so long as
that gimmick didn't cost money. Once again, however, the most impor-
tant factor was film stock, which became a sort of celluloid gold, some-
thing so precious that every effort was made to use as little of it as pos-
sible, even in the government-run studios. All of these conditions just
mentioned left visible marks on the films themselves. The result was pri-
marily a functional style: functional lighting, functional editing, functional
staging, and functional performances. Any stylistic flourish was more or
less a desperate attempt to hide the lack of production values and, most
of all, the lack of film stock. Hou himself would be steeped in these prac-
tices for many years. But unlike most directors in Taiwan, he did not com-
pletely internalize them. Instead, he often felt he had to find a way around
what he perceived as their most egregious shortcomings, most of all for
performances. This sustained attempt became the critical first steps in the
development of a world-renowned style. Let us now explore in detail what
it is he learned and, in the end, had to work against.
Lighting Designs: Functional at Best

Lighting is a good place to begin in assessing a film industry's economic
health. The lighting designs were conspicuously uniform in the Taiwanese
films of this time, and remarkably functional. Because these films were
shot in an anamorphic format ("a poor man's widescreen") and on color
film stocks, a lot of light was needed, as was the case in Hollywood color
films over a decade earlier. Yet there was simply no effort to shape or
sculpt the lighting, or to soften it. Instead, the lighting was normally flat,
and sometimes both actors and inanimate objects would cast hard-edged
shadows on the background.
A good example of this is a film called The Ripening (Putao chengshou
shi# 1970). At one point in the film, the female protagonist walks into her
bedroom and approaches a corner. Her body casts a hard and clearly de-
fined shadow on both walls in the corner, meaning there is a hard light
coming from two directions with no clear motivation for either source
(fig. 1).4 Certainly this kind of lighting serves the basic function of illumi-
Figure 1: Hard shadows in The nation, and most audience members will not consciously notice the double
Ripening (1970).
shadow. At the same time, however, no audience member will associate it
with high production values either.
Once again, this comes as little surprise: lighting is time-consuming,
4 The stills used here are jpeg files
and Taiwan's film industry allowed for as little time as money. Although
captured from VCDs, not from actual
prints of the films, which are very many of Hong Kong films from this time were lit in the same way, the
difficult to find. One key difference
filmmakers could often rely on dynamic action to compensate for the light-
between the VCD and the film print is
that the former are cropped off to fit ing. In fact, the flat lighting often melded well with very physical action
the standard 4:3 aspect ratio of the
and comedy. Taiwanese filmmakers doing primarily wenyi films, on the
television set - they do not show the
full frame of the anamorphic format, other hand, had to find other ways around this fundamental problem,
which was over two times wider than
and they did so by using a series of quick and easy visual gimmicks.
its height. (As a result, these images
are missing much on both sides of the
frame.) For our purposes here, An Array of Visual Gimmicks
however, what can be seen should be
sufficient to illustrate the points Like the lighting designs, one of the most pervasive visual gimmicks in
being discussed.
Taiwanese films of the 1970s was also directly related to the film stock
being used. As mentioned earlier, these films were shot on slower color
stocks in anamorphic formats. Not only did they require a large amount of
light, they also tended to have a very shallow depth of field. Taiwanese
directors, however, did not try to work within this narrow depth of field;
rather they would accentuate this shallowness to almost perverse extremes,
often putting incidental material in the foreground to beautify, or "soften,"
the image by its blurriness. Sometimes these foreground elements might
even partially obscure the focus of the action in the mid-ground.
In Love in a Cabin (Baiwu zhi Man), a 1974 film directed by Pai Ching-
jui, this practice becomes almost polymorphously perverse. For a large
number of camera setups, something was placed in front of the camera -
and out of focus; this could be neon lights, grates, fountains, candles, or
even hanging beads. For example, early on in the film, the star-crossed
lovers meet, and every effort is made to put something in the foreground
to "beautify" the images (figs. 2-4). Later on, they are in the namesake
cabin dancing, and several shots in succession feature blurred candles in
the foreground that almost obscure the actors' faces (fig. 5). Figure 2: Love in a Cabin.
Often these out-of-focus touches were coupled with other inexpen-

sive gimmicks as well. For example, later in the film, the father of the
boyfriend explains to the female protagonist why she has to break up
with his son: their relationship will interfere with his son's otherwise bright
and filial future. Not only is there the use of foreground elements - in this
case, beads (fig. 6) - to partially obscure the view, there is also a series of
quick zooms right at the moment he tells her that she has to part ways Figure 3: Love in a Cabin.
with her boyfriend (figs. 7-8). Quick zooms were equally common in Hong
Kong films of the time and were generally used for dramatic emphasis, a
feature of kung-fu films that is often parodied to this day. Nevertheless,
quick zooms in Taiwan wenyi films did not mesh with the films' style as
they did with the kinetic style of Hong Kong action films; rather, they
were another desperate attempt at compensating for the lack of overall
production values.
Figure 4: Love in a Cabin.
Love in a Cabin is an extreme example that highlights the norm. Most
Taiwanese films from this time displayed a similar array of visual gimmicks.
For example, Cloud of Romance (Wo shi yi pian yun), which was made by
Qiong Yao's own production company around 1976, has one scene where
Brigitte Lin (who became a major star in this genre), rushes to a coffee
shop to express her love to another famed Qiong Yao film star, Qin Han.
Once again, this "soft-focus" style employs out-of-focus objects in the ex-
treme foreground as the softening element, in this case, lamps set on the
Figure 5: Love in a Cabin.
table (figs. 9-10).
So pervasive were these techniques that even the most esteemed di-
rector in Taiwan, Li Hsingf employed them with great regularity. Perhaps
for this reason, many critics from the 1970s saw the unevenness of his
work as evidence of serious trouble in this industry as a whole (Dan 1972:
54-55). Li worked in many genres, most notably as the premier director of
"healthy realist" films from the 1960s. Yet he also made Qiong Yao films,
including a 1973 work entitled Heart with a Million Knots (Xin you qianqian
Figure 6: Use of foreground beads in jie). The continuity person on the set was Hou Hsiao-hsien, working on his
Love in a Cabin.
first film-related job.
One key scene in Heart with a Million Knots is in a dining room, one
of the "three tings" common in Qiong Yao films. The female protagonist,
a live-in nurse played by Zhen Zhen, tries to convince her elderly patient
that his son is very filial, not disobedient as he mistakenly believes. The
scene occurs over two minutes' time and twenty-one shots. There is the
usual hard lighting, something evident in the clearly defined shadow cast
by a third character, a servant standing by a rear wall. In most of the wider
Figure 7a: Beginning of zoom in Love
in a Cabin. shots, there are the usual out-of-focus elements in the extreme fore-
ground - the outlines either of glass trinkets or of a candelabrum, or both.

Even in some of the closer shots, there are out-of-focus elements, usually a
chair off to one side. In the ninth shot, there is a quick zoom for dramatic
emphasis, during a reaction shot of the father right after the nurse men-
tions the name of the son he has practically disowned. This quick zoom,
coupled with dramatic music, makes his displeasure upon hearing this name
unmistakable. Unfortunately, there are no readable stills to use here as
Figure 7b: End of zoom.
examples, but this description should make clear that the godfather of
Taiwanese films, Li Hsing, was an avid practitioner of this industry's most
pervasive stylistic practices. Moreover, this film makes use of one other
practice - scene breakdown - that will form the core lesson in Hou's ap-
prenticeship.
The Taiwanese Method of Scene Breakdown
As mentioned earlier, the harsh, functional lighting designs and quick zooms
were equally prevalent in Hong Kong films of the same period. The out-
of-focus foreground elements are found mostly in Taiwanese films, not in
Hong Kong, although there are some European and American precedents
for this practice dating back to the 1960s. These technique are mere win-
dow dressing, however, when compared to the one practice with which
the Taiwanese industry most distinguished itself: scene breakdown. The
use of scene breakdown was above all else motivated by a pronounced Figure 8a: Beginning of zoom in Love
in a Cabin.
need to save film stock.
The scene from Li Hsing's Heart with a Million Knots discussed earlier
has another feature that is not so noticeable at first: despite having nearly
two dozen shots, and despite so many of them being shot/reverse shots,
only seven of the shots in the entire scene are from a camera setup that
has already been used in this scene. Furthermore, these repeated setups
are found only among those sections of successive and closer shots that
switch between two people talking. Sandwiching and separating these Figure 8b: End of zoom.
clusters of shot/reverse shots are seven shots taken from a greater

distance.
At first glance, this resembles the classic Hollywood technique of be-

ginning a scene with an establishing shot and then scattering reestablish-
ing shots throughout. The reestablishing shots are often inserted to pro-
vide both visual dynamism and dramatic punctuation. Although similar to
a staple of popular Hollywood cinema, there is one distinct difference:
Figure 9: Soft focus in Cloud of
these seven wider shots are each from a completely new camera setup.Romance.
Never is the wider shot taken from the same location on the set. This, in
fact, is a very odd practice even in a commercial cinema. In Hollywood, it is

common practice to shoot a master shot of a scene, which means shooting
the scene in its entirety from a great enough distance to capture all the
action within the frame. Often several takes are done of this master shot
to ensure there is at least one good take. After a master shot is completed,
the camera is then moved to several other places for the cut-ins, close-ups,
Figure 10: Soft focus in Cloud of
reactions shots, detail shots, and so forth, a practice commonly known as Romance.
"coverage." The key is that no matter what other shots are used, there is
always a master shot to fall back on; in other words, any part of that mas-
ter shot can be used for any reestablishing shot - from that same wide
angle - at any point in the scene while editing.
The master shot was rarely used in Taiwan film. So alien was this prac-
tice to the industry that Hou had worked for nearly a decade before he
even heard the term "master shot" (Hou 2001). Instead, the practice for
returns to wider shots was to shoot them from new camera setups be-
cause the two shots were being filmed independently anyway. This would,
after all, ensure some visual variety in the finished product. Furthermore,
as we have seen, the lighting was so uniform that there appears to have
been little, if any, tweaking of it from camera setup to camera setup, as
would be the case in Hollywood, where directors of photography are no-
torious for "cheating" for each particular camera setup. Whereas Holly-
wood directors were thus even less inclined to use more setups, Taiwanese
directors, satisfied with purely functional lighting designs, felt no such
hindrance.
The Taiwanese use of a high number of different camera setups re-

sembles similar practices in Hong Kong, whose filmmakers also did mini-
mal tweaking of the lighting from shot to shot and who were as apt to
put the camera in almost any conceivable location for any given scene.
David Bordwell (2000: 129) refers to this as the "segment shooting" method
of Hong Kong, where shots are done from a variety of angles and then
edited together afterward into a single scene without a master shot to fall
back on. The result is a wider variety of camera setups than is the norm in
Hollywood film with its master shot/coverage system, which, by contrast,
usually results in a greater number of repeated camera setups.
Yet whereas the shooting methods were quite similar in Hong Kong
and Taiwan, the motivations and results were not. In Hong Kong, segment
shooting was the most efficient way to create dynamic action scenes in a
labor-intensive industry. Filmmakers would still use plenty of film stock
and several takes in these action scenes. In Taiwan, because of the high
cost of film stock, frugalness was a constant concern. Unlike in Hong Kong#
every effort was made to keep the shooting ratios to a bare minimum,
and for this reason alone, a filmmaker would never think of shooting a
master shot, which was deemed "wasteful." Given these conditions, a four-
to-one shooting ratio was considered extravagant in Taiwan; the norm
was between three-to-one and two-to-one. By the late 1970s and early
1980s, the ratio was getting even lower yet. Hou himself was taught by
producer-director Kuo Ching-chiang how to get the shooting ratio under
two-to-one. Hou says that in one film (which he does not name) he was
able to get 1 1,000 feet of stock for the finished film out of a paltry 18,000
feet of exposed stock - a shooting ratio of 1.6-to-one (Hou 2001). Indeed,
from the industry's standpoint, the ideal film would have been a perfect
one-to-one shooting ratio where what is seen was all that was ever shot
on film.
A simple example will suffice to demonstrate how this shooting method

was done. Misty Moon, Misty Birds (Yue menglong, niao menglong, circa
late 1970s) includes a short scene in a living room. The scene is composed
of merely six shots, but they are taken from four camera setups (fig. 11).
According to Hou (2001), ideally nothing more would be recorded on film
than what these six shots show. There was never an instance where the
entire scene was shot in one take from a distance, as would normally be
done in Hollywood. Instead, this scene was shot a line at a time: the direc-
tor would say "Action," the actor would say his or her line (or lines if there
was more than one in a shot), and then the director would say "Cut! " This
was then repeated for the next setup, and so on. Furthermore, whenever
there was a closer shot, such as the single shot of Brigitte Lin, the other
actors would not even be on the set. Instead, says Hou, an actor isolated in
a single shot (where the other characters are not seen, but are implied to
be present) would be looking only at the assistant director's raised, clenched
fist, not the actor he or she is supposed to be interacting with. Only in a
Figure 11a: Shot 1, the only one from this Figure 11b: Shot 2, Brigitte Lin speaking to Figure 11c: Shot 3, a 2-shot shot separately.
camera position. "clenched fist."
Figure 11d: Shot 4, likely shot right after Figure 11e: Shot 5, only what is shown was Figure 11f: Shot 6, shot separately as well,
shot 1 . shot on film. like after shot 4.
shot/reverse shot situation was a repeated camera setup likely, yet each
shot would still be done in the line/cut/line/cut/line/cut method. After one
actor completed his or her lines, he or she would then leave the room, and
the other(s) would come in and do the same from the other angles (Hou
2001).
Without a master shot, nothing was recorded on film that was the
result of a single, unimpeded take of the entire scene. This Taiwanese
method of scene breakdown, based on the need to conserve film stock, in
turn had a profound impact on performances. Given such extreme frag-
mentation during shooting, having their best moments left on the editing
room floor was the least of an actor's concern in Taiwan. In fact, it was no
small miracle if any of their best moments got recorded on film in the first
place. Such a stop-an d -start, halting-in-mid-emotion# and emoting-to-a-
clenched-fist method was more than detrimental to performances; it
stopped them cold.
This connection between film stock and quality of performance would
have profound implications for the fate of Taiwanese cinema. Although
the Taiwanese film industry could not afford sufficient film stock, it also
could not afford to have such subpar performances. As we have seen, Tai-
wanese cinema, unlike that in Hong Kong, specialized in non-action genres.
As such, the performances of the actors take on added importance, and
yet the conditions of production precluded anything more than functional
performances at best. It was a vicious catch-22 that left the Taiwanese film
industry vulnerable whenever Hong Kong upped the ante, which it did
once more in the early 1980s. By that time, Hong Kong films were even
dominating Taiwan's own film awards: the Golden Horse. The Taiwanese
film industry was in a severe crisis unlike any it had faced before. It was
during this period that Hou Hsiao-hsien began his directorial career.
The Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien is today noted for an unusual long take style, often breath-
taking lighting designs, and narratives that are elliptical in ways unlike
most other art cinema films past and present. These salient traits, how-
ever, were the result of a long aesthetic journey - much longer, in fact,
than many realize - that began well before Hou emerged as a leading
director of the Taiwanese New Cinema in 1983.
Although he directed his first feature film in 1980, Hou's aesthetic

journey began as far back as 1 973 with his work on Li Hsing's Heart with a
Million Knots. The apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien spanned eight years
(1973-1980) and nearly twenty films. During those years, Hou himself was
steeped in the previously mentioned practices of the Taiwan commercial
film industry. Of particular importance was his extensive experience as an
assistant director in no fewer than eleven films. In Taiwan, directors rarely
did the actual directing; it was the assistant directors who faced the day-
to-day problems on the set, including how to keep film stock use to a bare
minimum. The directors usually offered their instructions and then would
be off doing other things (perhaps even playing mahjong) while the film
was being shot (Hou 2001). These experiences drove home for Hou the
limitations of existing filmmaking practices, teaching him invaluable les-
sons. Once he became a director himself, Hou began to slowly dismantle
these practices in piecemeal fashion. Many of these alternatives - all ar-
rived at during his work as a commercial director - remain central to Hou's
style today, long after he shed the "commercial" label as a director.
This transformation from commercial film to art film did not happen
overnight, however. The director of City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster
is also the director of popular genre pieces such as Cute Girl (Jiu shi liuliu
de ta, 1980), Cheerful Wind (Fenger tita cai, 1981), and The Green , Green
Grass of Home (Zai hepan qing cao qing, 1 982). The style of this commer-
cial trilogy, however, is not entirely distinguishable from other films of this
time. To be sure, he would almost never use out-of-focus elements in the
foreground, but one can find quick zooms in Hou's early commercial works,
and even some slow zooms were used in Boys from Fengkuei (Fenggui
laide ren, 1 984), after which they mostly disappeared. Furthermore, Hou's
early works do not distinguish themselves in regards to lighting. It was
only during his work with the cinematographer Mark Lee on A Time to
Live, A Time to Die that he began to explore much more intricate and
daring lighting designs, a part of his art that became fully manifested in
his works from the 1990s.
The first major breakthrough for Hou, however, came in an area that
has often been overlooked: performance. Hou knew that existing prac-
tices needed to be changed when it came to performances, but as an assis-
tant director, he was bound to the conventional methods. Once he be-
came a director himself, he began with the "novel" idea that a director
should actually direct on the set. More important, he began to experi-
ment with various ways of tweaking performances. This experimentation
in performance is closely related to Hou's use of the long take. Hou is
rightly identified today as master of the long take, but initially he did not
pursue long takes for their own sake; they were a by-product of his quest
for better performances. Hou found that performances within the exist-
ing segment-shooting method could be better served if each shot were
longer. During the period 1980-1982, the average shot in a Taiwanese film
lasted a little over eight seconds; Hou's commercial trilogy, on the other
hand, average around eleven to twelve seconds per shot. 5 Although this is 5 Cute Girl was at 11.3 seconds per
shot. Cheerful Wind at 12.7 seconds,
not all that impressive compared to Hou's films in the 1990s, where an
and The Green , Green Grass of Home
average shot usually lasts close to two minutes, in the milieu of the time, at 11.3. This is merely a general
measurement of the average length
this was a marked change. Even if he still used heavy editing, long takes
of a shot, a crude measurement at
seemed to Hou a practical way to give his actors more breathing room. best. There are shots that are much
shorter than this, and a few that can
This pursuit of better performances also meant dispensing with the
reach almost a minute in length.
habit of using a minimal amount of film stock. For The Green, Green Grass
of Home, between 40,000 to 50,000 feet of film stock was used; this was
considered very wasteful by existing standards (Rayns 1988: 164). By using
more film stock than was the norm, Hou developed a reputation as a mav-
erick. Furthermore, this quest for more film stock would become a rallying
cry for the New Cinema Hou would soon join.
Still, one serious obstacle remained: stars - or as Hou calls them, "popu-
lar singers who couldn't act" (Hou 2001). These singer-actor wannabes
were so image conscious, in fact, that there was very little Hou could do
with them despite his innovations. It was in The Green, Green Grass of
Home that Hou's first major breakthrough occurred, not with the adult
stars, but with children. A standout moment is when a young boy gets
upset at his father for killing his pet owl. The longest take in this scene is a
fifty-five-second shot using a strong composition and staging in depth,
with the father in the foreground sitting with his back to the camera,
while the young boy moves diagonally in the distance (fig. 1 2). What stands
out, however, is the boy moving to and fro, kicking vegetables and yelling
Figure 12a: Child actors in The Green, Green Grass of Home..
Figure 12b: Child actors in The Green, Green Grass of Home..
Figure 12c
in a fit of anger. This scene, and the boy's performance, are simply a tour
de force.
The secret, as it turns out, was improvisation. Hou soon learned he

could tell these children the situation and let them improvise lines. This
was something he could never do with the adult stars at the time, such as
Kenny В (Rayns 1988: 163-164). In Hou's career, this use of improvisation
marked a quantum leap, as big as any he took later as a New Cinema
director. What Hou first did with children in The Green , Green Grass of
Home remains to this day the modus operandi he uses with every actor,
even a big-name star such as Tony Leung.
In response to the concrete problems he faced in the commercial film
industry, Hou developed a style that included the long take and a reliance
on improvisation. These techniques, in turn, had a profound impact on his
overall production process, including narrative structure. Scripting with
Hou is primarily an oral process whereby Zhu Tianwen, a writer who has
scripted every Hou film since 1983, gets together with Hou and they bounce
ideas off each other, jotting down any notes they needed. When shooting
is about to commence, Zhu gathers these notes and writes out a sem-
blance of a script that will often only vaguely resemble what appears in
the finished film. Furthermore, this "script" (for lack of a better term) is
provided only to the technical crew to give them some notion of what
situations they will face and what preparations are needed in
preproduction. Hou himself never uses a script while shooting, and nei-
ther do the actors, who are asked to improvise their lines according to the
general scenario Hou supplies them (Zhu 2001). Hou provides his actors
only with situations, moods, and a sense of atmosphere; he leaves it up to
them to come up with dialogue (Hou 2001). In short, one can see that
some of the most prominent features of Hou's aesthetic - the long take,
more elliptical narratives, understated performances - would never have
come about had he not first tried something very new with child actors
while working as a commercial director.
Conclusion
It is almost a truism to point out that most of the great "movements" and
"new waves" in film history were largely a reaction to what came before
them: Soviet Montage was a reaction against the slow, brooding Russian
film dramas of the 1910s; Italian Neorealism was a reaction to "white tele-
phone" films of the Fascist era; the French NewWave was a reaction against
the Cinema of Quality; and the New German Cinema was a reaction against
"Papa's Cinema." In similar fashion, the Taiwanese New Cinema was a col-
lective and youthful rejection of the standard cinematic fare coming out
of Taiwan, epitomized most of all by the formulaic Qiong Yao films.
What makes Hou so unusual is that he was steeped in the practices he
would turn against. He had worked his way up in that industry nearly a
decade before joining the New Cinema. Hou had none of the critical, theo-
retical, and literary background that leaders of other cinematic movements
often had; he was largely unaware of much of world cinema outside of
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Instead, what he had was first-
hand experience based on the daily grind replete with the frustrations
and hard-earned lessons about the concrete realities and limitations of
existing filmmaking practice.

The Hou Hsiao-hsien style emerged not from any single factor or agent,
but from a confluence of them. Government policies forced filmmakers to
economize in Taiwan, most of all on film stock. To compensate for this,
filmmakers in Taiwan borrowed some practices from Hong Kong (segment
shooting, flat lighting, quick zooms) and coupled them with ones more
specific to Taiwan (out-of-focus elements, a peculiar way of shooting a
scene). In such an environment comes along an unknown person named
Hou Hsiao-hsien. He accrues extensive experience with these practices, and
he finds one in particular - the way of shooting a scene a line at a time -
especially wanting in terms of performance. Once he becomes a director
himself, he develops new ways of working around these concrete prob-
lems: slightly longer takes on average, using more film stock than was the
standard, and, eventually, and most important, a new way of improvising
and scripting that he first used with children. The choices Hou made within
the existing framework had a profound influence not only on him, but on
the film industry as a whole.
Yet Hou did not develop this style as a form of brave resistance against
the filmic conventions of his times. Rather, he evolved with his times. Had
the Taiwanese film industry not reached such dire straits by the time he
became a director, Hou conceivably would have continued to work within
the parameters of that industry, perhaps tweaking things here and there,
but still putting out generic fare, albeit probably with refreshing touches.
Instead, Hou suddenly found the freedom to fully explore his own aes-
thetic, just as he found a once-closed Taiwanese society now opened up.
He wisely learned from the past instead of blatantly rejecting it. He built
upon what his intuition and experience had already taught him - about
performance, about how the long take can aid performances, and about
how one can work outside the normal confines of a script. If Hou does
stand out in world cinema today, one reason is because he learned his art
in a way that others have not. One can find the origins of a great aesthetic
even in the most unlikely places.
Glossary
Baiwu zhi lian ВЛЯ»

Beiqing chengshi
Fenggui lai de ren ШИЯШЛ
Fenger tita cai
Feihu jiangjun
jiankang xieshi
Jiushi liuliu de ta SftSSiiWÍÊ
keting, fanting, kafeiting
Kuo Ching-chiang
Lee, Mark (Li Pingbin)
Leung, Tony (Liang Chaowei)
Li Hanxiang
Li Hsing (Li Xing)
Lin, Brigitte (Lin Qingxia)
Pai Ching-jui ЙШЙ
Putao chengshu shi Й1§йШ113
Qin Han
Qiong Yao pian ®Шт"
Soong, James (Song Chuyu)
Tongnian wangshi
wenyi pian леи-
Wo shi yipian yun Ш1-
Ximeng rensheng flK^AíÈ
Xin you qianqian jie /ÍAÍtŤŤáĚ
Yang, Edward (Yang Dechang) tSIi
Yue menglong niao menglong
Zai hepan qing cao qing £5qj||p|if|^||
Zhen Zhen
Zhongyang dianying gongsi
Zhu Tianwen
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(Discussion of Execution in Autumn). Yingxiang 3 (June): 54-63.
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(A discussion of Hou Hsiao-hsien's style). In Lin Wenqi Shen
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Taiwanese Popular Cinema and the Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Author(s): James Udden

difficult however, is explaining the origins of this unique aesthetic. Many

120 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 121

122 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Conditions in the Taiwanese Film Industry

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 123

124 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

That the two industries tended to specialize in different genres fur-

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 125

There were many possible subcategories of wenyi films. One type of

126 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Lighting Designs: Functional at Best

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 127

128 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Often these out-of-focus touches were coupled with other inexpen-

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 129

ground - the outlines either of glass trinkets or of a candelabrum, or both.

The Taiwanese Method of Scene Breakdown

130 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

clusters of shot/reverse shots are seven shots taken from a greater

At first glance, this resembles the classic Hollywood technique of be-

fact, is a very odd practice even in a commercial cinema. In Hollywood, it is

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 131

The Taiwanese use of a high number of different camera setups re-

132 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

A simple example will suffice to demonstrate how this shooting method

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 133

134 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

The Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Although he directed his first feature film in 1980, Hou's aesthetic

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 135

136 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 137

Figure 12b: Child actors in The Green, Green Grass of Home..

138 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

The secret, as it turns out, was improvisation. Hou soon learned he

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 139

existing filmmaking practice.

140 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 141

Baiwu zhi lian ВЛЯ»

142 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Cai Hongsheng 1990. "Hou Xiaoxian, xin dianying, Zhongguo

Cheshire, Godfrey. 1993. "Time Span: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien."

Dan Hanzhang 1972. "Qiu jue zuotanhui" «ЭДЯО) SUS:®

Frodon, Jean-Michel ( jc6 - Ж $} ° ftël). 2000. "Zai Fengshan de

Hou Hsiao-hsien 2000. Interview by Emmanuel Burdeau (3£ltŽB °

Huang Ren JH- 1994. Dianying yu zhengzhi xuanchuan

Lianbang film company). Taipei: National Film

Jiao Xiongping Ш SIP (Peggy Chiao). 1993.

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 143

Lin Zhiming tr. 2000. Hou Xiaoxian (Hou Hsiao-hsien).

Lu Fei-yi 1998. Taiwan dianying: zhengzhi, jingji, meixue 1949-

Meng Hongfeng ä£;#llij. 2000. "Hou Xiaoxian fengge lun"

Ni, Zhen. 1994. "Classical Chinese Painting and Cinematographic

Pimpaneau, Jacques (МЙ ° ШШШ). 2000. "Yingxi zhi guang"

Soong, James [Song Chuyu] ЯШШ. 1981. "Song Chuyu juzhang de

Yeh, Yueh-yu. 2001. "Politics and Poetics of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Films."

144 • The Strange Apprenticeship of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Zhu Tianwen and Wu Nianzhen 1992. Lian I ian f engchen ШШШШ

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 145

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